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Comment by hnmm23 | Hacker News Reader

i mean i want to learn about everything before that too, like history, links, diagnoses - to be sure, as well as testing/tracking metrics and the likes,

also reading is the easy part, but what about understanding? when im running into medical terms/and other things im not familiar with or equipped to understand, where do you go? bc i find myself ending down different rabbit holes and my productivty diminishes and my thinking gets scattered

i hope im making sense :)

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Biologist here. I would start with a textbook called Janeways Immunobiology. It is the textbook that all of us have used to learn immunology and should be accessible for anyone with a high-school understanding of biology. The book already has many explanations of autoimmune diseases, so it should be everything you need.

Seconding this. I would also add that Biochemistry was really the class that first gave me the "I should have loved biology" feeling, so whatever the equivalent Biochem textbook is might be interesting as well.

University textbooks. They are written with the goal of building that foundational knowledge.

Scientific papers are great, but they assume a lot of pre-existing knowledge, whereas a textbook is designed to expose you to the concepts without any prior assumptions.

It can take me weeks if not months to fully comprehend a new paper. One paper will require that I look up a lot of new terms, watch a lot of videos explaining the terms and repeating the process for the cited references. It sounds like you need more structure so I would suggest you take notes, set goals, organize your materials and schedule time for focusing on particular topics, tasks or techniques.

It’s hard to do that when I’m entirely new. Idk where to start or what raw knowledge I possess that combined with biology would achieve the results I want.

I know the end goal though, I want there to be an option, a fix or a painless way to manage autoimmune diseases, things like hormone and metabolic response imbalances -thyroid, androgen, progesterone, insulin - etc they all share a link to deadly lifelong debilitating diseases That make living hell for so many people and I want to take that away for them or at least generations down the line.

I know I’m a rambling scattered mess right now I thank you for being patient

Be aware that on the scale of complexity, the immune system is at the deep end of the pool. Your motives may be admirable, but the chances of you jumping straight in and emerging with the Olympic gold medal are good as zero.

If you want to get into the science of it then I’d suggest you start with general courses in biochem and physiology at the undergrad level and build your way up from there†. Expect to invest a good hard 10-20 years of your life getting up to speed, with no hard guarantees of success at the end of it.

Or, if you just want to help people right now, go get yourself involved in charitable fundraising for an organization that’s already working the problem. Still no guarantees, but at least they’ve got a big head start. Just don’t end up on a list like this, ’kay:

https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/?s=immune+scam

† Courses I flunked myself, BTW, but at least I learned just how much I don’t know—an insight I’ve subsequently found both invaluable and frighteningly scarce in tech.

http://augmentingcognition.com/ltm.html

Add the word "review" to your search queries. Often, single author articles just review history and current state of the art.

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